Intermittent crash on fire tv when launching video player

[andymal]

Server Version#: 1.24.3.5033-757abe6b4
Player Version#: 8.23.2.28087

Occasionally when selecting a video, it will start to play for a couple seconds and then the plex fire tv app will crash. Usually on subsequent tries this issue will not happen, although rarely it will hapen multiple times in a row. This has been happening for a while, maybe 6 months or more, through several updates of both the fire tv app and server. I’ve recently even updated to windows 10 and the same issue is still happening. I did copy over the server configuration files from my old server to keep my watched data.

Grabbed the network logs and I’m seeing a few errors related to connections timing out or being dropped. This seems odd since it’s just running over LAN. Maybe some of these disconnections are normal?

Would really like to get this fixed if possible. It doesn’t make plex completely unusable, but has got me searching for alternatives.

plex_network_log.txt (4.8 MB)

[andymal]

Bump. If anyone has a recommendation on where I could start or ideas about which exceptions aren’t normal that would be a big help!
Here are some of the errors I pulled from the log. There are multipe of each of these but I think the ones on 10/6 correspond to the intermittent crashing I’m seeing.

Also is there a way to get logging from the firetv android app or is the network log all I have to go on?

Thanks!

10-05 21:14:30.197 e: [ServerWebSocket] Websocket error
10-05 21:14:30.230 e: An exception occurred: javax.net.ssl.SSLException: Read error: ssl=0xb9ca0dc8: I/O error during system call, Connection reset by peer

10-05 23:10:33.737 e: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] playerFailed [eventTime=1689.17, mediaPos=1684.65, window=0, period=0
com.google.android.exoplayer2.c1: null error, index=-1, format=null, format_supported=YES
at com.google.android.exoplayer2.f1.i0(SourceFile:2)
…
Caused by: com.google.android.exoplayer2.i1: Player release timed out.
at com.google.android.exoplayer2.f1.i0(SourceFile:1)
… 22 more

10-05 23:10:36.591 e: Stacktrace: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Focused child not found among the 1 items. Hub type: show, subtype: unknown
at com.plexapp.plex.utilities.e2.c(SourceFile:8)

10-05 23:13:43.611 e: An exception occurred: java.net.SocketTimeoutException: failed to connect to /192.168.1.144 (port 32400) after 5000ms

10-06 02:49:39.435 e: AppsFlyerApplicationBehaviour Error getting conversion data: failed to connect to localhost/127.0.0.1 (port 443) after 10000ms: isConnected failed: ECONNREFUSED (Connection refused)

10-06 02:49:40.394 e: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] playerFailed [eventTime=3.69, mediaPos=0.00, window=0, period=0
com.google.android.exoplayer2.c1: Source error
at com.google.android.exoplayer2.g1.handleMessage(SourceFile:36)
at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:98)
at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:135)
at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:61)
Caused by: java.io.IOException
at com.plexapp.plex.player.t.p1.q.maybeThrowSourceInfoRefreshError(SourceFile:4)
at com.plexapp.plex.player.t.p1.v.maybeThrowSourceInfoRefreshError(SourceFile:1)
at com.google.android.exoplayer2.source.b0.maybeThrowPrepareError(SourceFile:4)
at com.google.android.exoplayer2.g1.o(SourceFile:20)
at com.google.android.exoplayer2.g1.handleMessage(SourceFile:25)
… 3 more
]
10-06 02:49:40.395 e: [Player][ExoPlayer] Playback error detected
10-06 02:49:40.397 i: [Player][Timeline] Handling player error
10-06 02:49:40.400 i: [Player][Timeline] Playback stopped (error: true)
10-06 02:49:40.401 i: [Player][Timeline] Player error not known by server, reporting original player error (or a playback interrupted one)
10-06 02:49:40.404 i: [Player] Error reported: MediaNotAccessible (null)
10-06 02:49:40.406 i: [Player][Timeline] Playback stopped (error: false)
10-06 02:49:40.413 e: An exception occurred: com.google.android.exoplayer2.c1: Source error
10-06 02:49:40.415 e: Stacktrace: com.google.android.exoplayer2.c1: Source error
at com.google.android.exoplayer2.g1.handleMessage(SourceFile:36)
at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:98)
at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:135)
at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:61)
Caused by: java.io.IOException
at com.plexapp.plex.player.t.p1.q.maybeThrowSourceInfoRefreshError(SourceFile:4)
at com.plexapp.plex.player.t.p1.v.maybeThrowSourceInfoRefreshError(SourceFile:1)
at com.google.android.exoplayer2.source.b0.maybeThrowPrepareError(SourceFile:4)
at com.google.android.exoplayer2.g1.o(SourceFile:20)
at com.google.android.exoplayer2.g1.handleMessage(SourceFile:25)
… 3 more

10-06 03:26:02.060 e: An exception occurred: com.google.android.exoplayer2.c1: null error, index=-1, format=null, format_supported=YES

[Bliksem81]

I’ve have the exact same experience, Windows 10 Plex Server, Multiple FireTV Sticks, all intermittent crashes on any content.

[andymal]

Have you taken any debug logs to see what errors are coming though?

Also I’ve noticed that it seems like the crashes happen less after I power off and start the fire stick back up. So I’ve been wondering if it could be related to memory issues or something that crops up after it’s been running a while…

[First_N_Last]

I am having the same experience with any of my Firestick 4K devices. Plex app will crash randomly when starting a video play. Most often occurs with 4K HDR playback.
Additionally, my FireTV Cubes randomly crash with video starts, and also have no audio playing with HDMI passthrough enabled.

My solution has been to use my Samsung Tizen based Plex app for playback instead.
The Tizen Plex app has been rock solid.

I have been waiting for updates to possibly fix this.

[andymal]

Interesting that it’s also an issue on the 4K Firestick.

Thanks for the info that it’s mostly related to HDR playback for you. I’m going to try to document when these crashes happen so I’ll keep that in mind.

[andymal]

One more thing I forgot to mention - these crashes were happening more often before I lowered the h.264 setting on the firestick Plex application. I don’t recall what it’s set to currently, but I did choose a setting 1 or two steps lower than the (recommended) level.

[vqu]

Did this issue ever get fixed?

Plex Fire TV stick crash when you play content

Everything works correctly from other devices. But if I try to play any content from Fire TV stick it crashes and restarts

and

Plex on FirestickTV issues, Help!

Long time Plex user and I’ve never had any serious issues until yesterday but I cant seem to find if anyone else is having this issue too. A recent update to the firestickTV Plex app has caused it not to work across all my firesticks (4 in total). Seems the UI has changed but my problem is that when I access the app it just freezes and crashes. I have reset the cache in the app settings and it makes it work for a brief time but reverts back to crashing, same thing when I uninstall and reinstall…

recommend an older version of the player. This can’t be the solution.

I am running adb debugs from the firetv now and there are a lot of oom killer going on and this one:
F/libc ( 6235): Fatal signal 11 (SIGSEGV), code 2, fault addr 0xb62b2254 in tid 6235 (plexapp.android)

[andymal]

Ended up buying a used 4th gen apple TV as the fire stick was getting incredibly slow and every update seemed to introdce more layers of Amazon ads that I had to wade through to get to what I actually wanted to see.